UCF and OptiGrate strengthen IP bonds

Orlando, FL (February 24, 2009) – The University of Central Florida (UCF) and OptiGrate Corp., an Orlando-based company that started 10 years ago with the commercialization of a breakthrough technology developed at UCF, has extended a licensing agreement giving the company exclusive rights to make, sell and sub-license its full line of distinctive holographic optical elements.

OptiGrate, a client of UCF’s award-winning-Business Incubation Program, designs and manufactures a full range of volume Bragg gratings (VBG), a type of unique narrowband optical filter for industrial, scientific, and defense applications. Superior technologies devised by the founder of the company, UCF Optics Professor Leon Glebov, allow OptiGrate to offer patented volume Bragg gratings with record characteristics.

OptiGrate was the first company that started commercialization of volume Bragg gratings in the late 1990’s and continues to set records in VBG technologies, supplying trademarked BragGrate™ gratings to customers in five continents.

With the renewed agreement, UCF’s complete VBG-related patent portfolio and all technology improvements made at UCF can be exclusively used by OptiGrate to protect its VBG manufacturing as well as secure OptiGrate’s customers in implementing BragGrate™ products in their applications. “We have pioneered VBG in inorganic glass and patented key VBG technologies covering high-efficiency grating
fabrication, use of VBG’s in all laser resonators for mode selection and stabilization, including laser diodes, of course, use of chirped Bragg gratings for ultra-short pulse stretching and compression and many other applications that require spectral and angular filtering,” said Glebov, who serves as OptiGrate’s chief technical officer.

“In 2008, UCF was ranked among the top 10 universities in the nation in technology strength,” said M.J. Soileau, UCF’s vice president for research and commercialization. Technology such as that developed by OptiGrate helped the university achieve that standing. “We are proud to achieve this milestone and we strongly support UCF spinoffs converting technologies born at UCF into real markets,” Soileau said.

Alexei Glebov, chief executive officer of OptiGrate, said that ”with the extension of this agreement we not only strengthen our bonds with UCF but also convey to our customers a clear statement that the highest quality patents will guard our products and our customers who trust BragGrate™ quality in their applications.”